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Researchers at IIT Delhi have partnered with industry and AIIMS to make an eco-friendly skin substitute for patients in need because of burn injuries.

The project is a part of IMPRINT programme, an MHRD supported Pan-IIT + IISc joint initiative to address the major science and engineering challenges of the country. The main motivation behind the present proposal is to develop an indigenous scaffold which will be biodegradable and biocompatible in nature. The researchers will examine the efficacy of the developed hybrid electrospun fibrous scaffolds/hydrogel scaffold (skin substitute) on burn wound animal model, which will further be translated to human patients due to biocompatible nature of its constituents. This will be part of Phase I clinical Trials on 30 patients.

“The idea is to provide a substitute alternative for patients own skin grafting or cadaver skin application. The proposed scaffold will become part of the skin and will act as a skin substitute. We hypothesized that it will take 3-4 week to completely heal patients with surgically created donor areas by harvesting graft and flaps,” says Prof Veena Koul, the principal investigator of the project.

Deliverables:

Scaffold can be fabricated in different size and dimension as needed. Initially the researchers will prepare scaffold of 5*5 cm, 10*10 cm, 15*15 cm and 10*15 cm. Depending on depth of the burn wound hydrogel based based scaffold will be manipulated and applied. Suturing can be performed to retain the scaffold over the wound bed. Semi wetted scaffold will be applied on the wound bed and will be covered with a polymeric membrane which will provide aeration to the wound. The researchers hypothesized that the proposed scaffold will provide an alternative to autologous skin grafting as well as substitute to cadaveric skin grafting. Thus it will act as skin substitute.